Norman Mailer. the Fight

Description

The rumble in the jungle: Mailer's masterpiece commentary and Ali's master photographers There ain t ten George Foremans in Africa. When he sees all the brothers, he ll know he s in Ali country. Muhammad Ali On October 30, 1974, in Kinshasa, Zaire, at the virtual center of Africa, two African American boxers were paid five million dollars apiece to affront each other in an epic match. One was Muhammad Ali, the aging but irrepressible professor of boxing who vowed to reclaim the championship he had lost. The other was George Foreman, who was as taciturn as Ali was voluble and who kept his hands in his pockets the way a hunter lays his rifle back into its velvet case. Observing them was Norman Mailer, whose grasp of the titanic battle s feints and stratagems and sensitivity to their deeper symbolism made his 1975 book, The Fight, a masterpiece of the literature of sport. Whether analyzing the fighters moves, interpreting their characters, or weighing their competing claims on the African and American souls, Mailer was a commentator of unparalleled energy, acumen, and audacity and surely one of the few intrepid enough to accompany Ali on a late-night run through the bush. In The Fight he restores our tarnished notions of heroism to a blinding gleam and establishes himself as a champion in his own right. Forty years after the publication of The Fight, this new abridged edition is illustrated for the first time with color and black-and-white photographs by the two men who captured Ali in the ring and in private like no one else: Howard L. Bingham and Neil Leifer. Limited to a total of 1,974 numbered copies signed by Howard L. Bingham and Neil Leifer, this book is available as Collector s Edition (No. 251 1,974) and in two Art Editions of 125 copies, each with a signed print either by Howard Bingham (No. 1 125) or Neil Leifer (No. 126 250)."